Graduate Students

Student Work Gallery: Spring 2024

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:26:40 +0000

Student Work Gallery: Spring 2024 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/27/2024 - 14:26

CMCI students from all departments develop their portfolios through classes, competitions, internships and more.

Here we have collected a variety of student work that highlights their personal and professional passions explored during their academic careers at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��.

View the work

Students across CMCI find ways to bring together their personal interests and academic pursuits. Since the college’s founding, we have showcased this diverse collection of student work.

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Mapping identity

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 04:39:51 +0000

Mapping identity Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 10/28/2023 - 22:39

By Joe Arney

For most people, winning a citywide essay contest as a teenager would just be a great way to get an all-expenses-paid trip to the nation’s most celebrated historical sites, like Washington, D.C.

For Nandi Pointer, there was a bigger prize.

“That was the first time I realized that my mind could take me places—my mind and my effort, and my trying,” she said. “And it helped give me this lust for seeing the world, and its cultures and people.”

Now in her third year in the media studies PhD program, Pointer’s curiosity about other people and their stories has led to impactful research into identity formation for Black men who’ve left the United States.

How she came to do so at CMCI is a story about Pointer finding her own identity—as a scholar, a documentary filmmaker and a niece to the Pointer Sisters, the influential R&B/soul group.

“Having famous aunts imbued me with this idea that anything was possible, that there’s no limitation to what you can do,” Pointer said.

But there was “sort of a dichotomy, as well,” she said. Her parents were both successful college professors, and her father’s side of the family included the Pointer Sisters, pro baseball player Aaron Pointer and NBA champion Paul Silas. But both sides of her family struggled with societal ills like violence and addiction.

That fueled her belief in the power of education—and also her curiosity about the violence Black men face in the United States and how that affects the formation of their identities. Pointer, who has worked and taught in South Korea, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, was abroad when George Floyd’s murder in 2020 catalyzed nationwide protests about the police and violence against African Americans.

“As a Black American woman, I was shocked,” she said. “But being in Saudi Arabia, there was this distance, so I was able to process those events in a different way. And it made me wonder about the other Black expats I was around, as well as the Black Americans experiencing these violent mediated events in the present moment in their own cities.”

“I’m hoping to change the perception around Black men by seeing them as teachers, understanding their lives, and ultimately learning about how their experiences as Black men in America led them to seek opportunities overseas.
—Nandi Pointer

Exploring media and violence

Pointer said she’s always been “fascinated by the media and its power to influence how we see ourselves in the world.” She held production roles at MTV’s news and documentaries division and produced content for Netflix, where she worked on the award-winning documentary “The Black Godfather.”

So, it’s no surprise her research interests also have roots in how the media demonstrates violence against Black men, from Rodney King and Oscar Grant to Ahmaud Arbery and Floyd. That has powered her other major interest, exploring the perspectives of Black students who’ve witnessed these murders through the media.

CMCI was a strong fit, she said, because the college gave her access to an advisor like Sandra Ristovska, assistant professor of media studies and a fellow documentary filmmaker.

“Sandra is the primary reason I came to CU,” Pointer said. “She got a grant from Mellon/ACLS”—the American Council of Learned Societies—“working on visual justice, media and human rights, which was really interesting to me.”

They’ve been close collaborators throughout Pointer’s PhD journey. Ristovska, Pointer said, has supported and challenged her as a scholar, giving her opportunities to showcase her own research insights.

“Nandi approaches the people she interviews with care and compassion, so they really open up to her, trusting her to tell their stories,” said Ristovska, an expert in how images shape the pursuit of justice and human rights. “She has a remarkable ability to analyze a pressing social issue from a unique perspective.”

Inspired, supportive CMCI faculty

At Ristovska’s suggestion, Pointer applied to the International Association for Media and Communication Research, in Lyon, France, where she presented in both the visual culture and newly created FLOW34 divisions; the latter showcases multimodal scholarships. She presented a short work in progress featuring the Black expats who will be a part of her future documentary film.

She’s also worked with Ristovska on a career diversity series for publicly engaged doctoral students at CMCI, insights from which were shared in a reflection piece and in a panel discussion at this year’s National Humanities Conference, in Indianapolis.

“I have been so impressed with how inspiring and supportive the CMCI faculty are,” Pointer said. “They really work with you to make sure you’re both guided and challenged along each step of the way.”

It’s the kind of impact she hopes to have one day as a professor. Her goal after completing her PhD is to join the faculty of a top research university that allows her to pursue her three loves of teaching, scholarship and filmmaking.

It’s a role she’ll excel in, Ristovska said.

“Nandi is driven by a strong commitment to social justice, and I really can’t wait to see where her journey takes her next,” she said.

A PhD student and documentary filmmaker is trying to understand how leaving the country influences how Black American men form their identities.

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Digging up the big story

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 00:22:25 +0000

Digging up the big story Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/27/2023 - 18:22

By Joe Arney

An important part of being a good enterprise reporter is a willingness to keep digging, even when the soil seems shallow.

Sometimes literally.

A news feature on agrivoltaics—the practice of growing crops beneath solar panels—that Gabe Allen and Tyler Hickman published in The Colorado Sunnot only helped validate both students’ interest in environmental journalism, it won them Best Scalable Innovation in Planet Forward’s 2023 Storyfest competition.

“Our instructor, Erica Hunzinger, talked about the importance of following your curiosity,” Allen said. “She encouraged us to go down this rabbit hole, even though it was weeks of digging before we knew we had a hook.”

Storyfest showcases student work that seeks to understand and illuminate innovations for how to best care for the planet. As part of the students’ win, they spent five days aboard a polar vessel in Iceland, learning how the country is addressing conservation alongside a team of naturalists, photo instructors and others.

“When you’re digging and you hit the wall, that just means that you have to go around it or go over it—find a new angle.
—Tyler Hickman

It was a valuable experience for two graduate students who chose to study journalism at CMCI thanks to the focus and opportunities made possible through its Center for Environmental Journalism.

“We’re trying to inform people first and foremost, but through these human interest stories, you’re also showing the impact these stories can create, and how they can bring about change,” Hickman said.

For the Sun feature, Allen and Hickman visited Jack’s Solar Garden, in Longmont, to share the story of founder Byron Kominek’s three-year battle to get a solar installation on his farm. The students’ persistence was rewarded when, deep into their investigation, a bill to expand agrivoltaics was proposed. Gov. Jared Polis signed it into law in May.

“When you’re digging and you hit the wall, that just means that you have to go around it or go over it—find a new angle,” Hickman said. “That’s something all our professors really drilled into us.”

Hunzinger, also public health collaborations editor at The Associated Press, called the pair “driven and ambitious.”

“You could see their growth in their in-class questions and discussions and in their assignments,” she said. “When these two decided to pair up for the final project, I knew we were in for a curious and thoroughly reported treat.”

For Allen, the opportunity to do enterprise-level reporting was a major motivator to attend grad school.

“It was fun to really dig into that piece—to spend a month talking to so many different people, from politicians and scientists to the farmer on the ground,” he said.

As conversations around solar farming entered the Statehouse, two student journalists found themselves on the forefront.

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Crystallizing curiosity

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 17:45:24 +0000

Crystallizing curiosity Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/06/2023 - 10:45

By Shannon Mullane (MJour’19)

Leysia Palen was walking back after teaching an undergraduate class in fall 2022 when her phone rang. Only, her phone never rings. Thinking it might be something urgent, she answered and heard Todd Saliman, the president of the University of Colorado’s four-campus system, on the line.

“I said, ‘Oh hi!’ like it was normal,” she said. “Then he congratulated me, and he told me the news.”

That was when Palen, a professor with a joint appointment in the departments of information science and computer science, learned she had just been awarded CU’s highest honor: the title of distinguished professor.

Since the award was established 45 years ago, only 138 professors have been recognized in this way across all four campuses. Palen—a “rock star” advisor who forged a new area of study and founded an academic department—was clearly a fitting candidate, according to past students and colleagues. For Palen, however, the news felt surprising and surreal.

“I had to tell people about it before it really sunk in,” Palen said. “In the aftermath, as I digested it, it made me feel great because it newly synthesized the different aspects of being a professor into one whole.”

The job of a tenured professor is divided into research, teaching and service, and Palen has shown leadership in all three, according to about 100 pages of nomination letters, instructor ratings and department recommendations submitted during the consideration process.

Distinguished Professor Leysia Palen is known in the academic community for her efforts to support her students and colleagues.

Often considered an authority figure in the field of crisis informatics, Palen has been named a distinguished professor for her work inside and outside the classroom.

Palen, who has a joint appointment with the departments of information and computer science, was recognized as a distinguished professor, the highest honor CU faculty can receive.

Breaking ground in research

Palen joined the University of Colorado Boulder as a half-time research professor in 1998 after earning a doctorate in information and computer science from the University of California Irvine and working for Microsoft and the Boeing Company.

In 2004, she began to focus her research on coordination using technology in one of the harshest environments, disasters. At the time, the World Wide Web was just over a decade old, online blogs had rolled out, Facebook was just being launched, and smartphones were imminent.

People were beginning to adopt these tools in new ways during times of crisis, Palen said. And as a first-generation college student, she wanted to do research that both contributed new knowledge and had practical applications for daily life.

“So the disaster arena was a place both to help and give back in a serious way, as well as critically think about large-scale coordination, or lack thereof, as it's technologically mediated,” Palen said.

Now, Palen is considered the creator and the leading authority in the field of crisis informatics, which focuses on the role of information produced by both official and unofficial actors when dealing with disaster situations in real time.

Her research has been cited more than 20,000 times and has won numerous awards. Highly relevant to the general public, Palen’s work has attracted media attention from outlets such as The Atlantic, CNN, The New York Times and PBS. She has also been recognized with election to the ACM CHI Academy and the prestigious ACM CHI Societal Impact Award for her work in crisis informatics.

“Professor Palen is a brilliant researcher with incredible vision,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington, in her nomination letter. “Her contributions to the scientific community and to the University of Colorado are both broad and profound. Her research has bridged theory and practice to contribute solutions to real-world problems and to define a new, interdisciplinary scientific field—crisis informatics.”

Crisis informatics is a multidisciplinary field combining computing and social science knowledge of disasters; its central tenet is that people use personal information and communication technology to respond to disaster in creative ways to cope with uncertainty.

From Science, volume 353, issue 6296

The science of mentorship

Starbird, now one of the world’s foremost experts on social media and disinformation, first met Palen over a coffee during a visit to CU before her first year as a doctoral student.

“I remember thinking to myself that she was the smartest person I’d ever met and that I was going to do whatever I could to find a way to work with her,” Starbird said in her nomination letter. “Leysia was a ‘rock star’ advisor—who invested in her students’ personal and professional success.

Palen’s record as a doctoral advisor is “remarkable,” according to the award nominations. In fields that remain male-dominated, the majority of her past graduate students and five of her six current doctoral students are women. Several of her women advisees, including Starbird, have gone on to achieve significant success.

“I don’t think I’d be a researcher if I hadn’t met her—if I hadn’t had the chance to be advised by her,” Starbird said.

As an instructor, advisor and mentor, Palen focuses on supporting her students as they learn to hone their own research ideas. She tries to figure out what people bring and where they want to go—which only adds to the diversity of perspectives in the field, Palen said.

She thinks of it in terms of helping students learn how to crystallize their own curiosity into clear thinking. With practice, it becomes systematic—then you can apply it to everything you can possibly encounter, she said.

“When you work on difficult problems, if you’ve got crystal clear clarity about how you’re thinking about something, you can really go far,” Palen said.

During the spring 2023 semester, Palen is working on new research and ongoing grant projects. The distinguished professor award has liberated her to more fully integrate research, teaching and service, she said. It’s exciting to bring research thinking into the classroom and new questions raised by classroom students back into the lab.

“There's this real, deep satisfaction about feeling like an integrated scholar,” Palen said. “Ultimately, you don't need a title or a rank to feel integrated along the lines of research, teaching and service, but I couldn't believe how much it helped to have my institution realize that about me.”

Leysia Palen was awarded CU’s highest honor for faculty—the title of distinguished professor. She offers a deeper look into her groundbreaking research career, her mentorship methods and her goals for the future.

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The Real People Behind the News

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 05:52:19 +0000

The Real People Behind the News Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/23/2022 - 22:52

By Malinda Miller (Engl, Jour’92; MJour’98)

How do journalists connect with audiences? What are the biggest challenges they face? Has social media changed how they report a story?

As news media have fundamentally changed over the years, the Pew Research Center has regularly tracked audience media consumption and gauged the public’s perceptions of the industry. But in an effort to “capture the other side of the story,” last spring it surveyed almost 12,000 journalists, said Amy Mitchell, the center’s director of journalism research, in a Q&A.

The Pew study found that 77% of journalists surveyed would choose their career again but identified several areas of concern, including political polarization and the impact of social media. Researchers also found that journalists think the pandemic has permanently changed the news industry.

CMCI Dean Lori Bergen had many of the same questions. She talked with three alumni from across the country—John Branch (MJour’89), Jackie Fortiér (MJour’13) and Vignesh Ramachandran (Jour’11)—over Zoom last summer about their day-to-day experiences as journalists.

Lori Bergen, PhD, is the founding dean of CMCI and currently on the boards of the Poynter Institute, Colorado Public Radio and the Colorado Press Association. Before joining academia, Bergen worked for several years as a journalist. She has co-authored several books, most recently News for US: Citizen-Centered Journalism.

John Branch (MJour’89) joined The New York Times in 2005 as a sports reporter. He won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2013 for “Snow Fall,” a multimedia story about a deadly avalanche in Washington State, and was a finalist for the prize in 2012. He is working on several months long multimedia projects. @JohnBranchNYT

Jackie Fortiér (MJour’13) is the senior health reporter for KPCC and LAist.com in Southern California and has also worked in public radio in Oklahoma and Colorado. She has won two regional Edward R. Murrow awards in California and one in Oklahoma. She works on quick-turn stories and hopes at some point to not just be reporting on infectious diseases. @jackiefortier

Vignesh Ramachandran (Jour’11) is a multiplatform editor for The Washington Post and co-founder of the Red, White and Brown Media newsletter on Substack, which focuses on South Asian American stories and community engagement. Previously, he worked at the PBS NewsHour, ProPublica, the Stanford Computational Journalism Lab and NBC News Digital. @VigneshR

Bergen: As we’ve been talking, it’s great to hear the differences in the work that each of you are doing. There’s this common thread of storytelling and the way each of you have applied your interests and skill sets in ways of connecting. I’m curious, what are some ways you engage with your audience?

Ramachandran: The last two years the number of in-person interviews has dramatically dwindled. A lot of it has been sourcing engagement through social networks. This year I’ve been experimenting with the audio function on Twitter to host conversations and see what issues people want to talk about. Some of the discussions ended up being more substantive and more engaging than I had expected, so it’s been a good experiment so far.

“I just want people to remember, there are real people behind this news.
—John Branch

Branch: Most of my connections are still pretty traditional with readers. It’s the usual social media and reader comment kind of channels. I’ll give you an interesting quick story, though. We did a big multimedia piece on a story I wrote about 18 months ago about the threat to some of the iconic tree species—the redwoods, the sequoias, the Joshua trees in California. A musical director at a pretty big concert hall here in California was moved by it and was trying to figure out how to connect arts to climate change. He commissioned several composers to write pieces off of that story. They’ll be performing unique and original works based off something I wrote, which has never happened to me before.

Bergen: Amazing. Whoever thought you’d be the muse to an orchestral performance? Jackie, has social media changed how you engage with your audiences?

Fortiér: I’ve never not had social media as a journalist, so it’s not that different than what I was doing before. (The pandemic) has meant a lot of over-the-phone interviews that I would really have preferred not to do over the phone, but that’s just the way it had to happen. It’s been really difficult to have patients, family members, nurses, doctors crying to you on the phone, talking about how difficult it’s been treating people or going through COVID, and you’re not there in person. A lot of them didn’t want to have video on while we were talking. I think that has been the hardest part of the pandemic for me.

Bergen: That’s interesting. I brought my generational perspective to this because I wanted to delve into how social media may have changed some of your work, but you’re reminding me that this has always been part of your reporting.

Fortiér: I covered the Planned Parenthood shooter in Colorado Springs. None of the institutions were on Twitter so I couldn’t pull any information from that. I was doing live updates because there was this shooter on the loose in Colorado Springs, and it was when people were traveling. It sounds morose to say, but we’re going to have another breaking news situation, and so now that institutions are actually putting that information out there, it helps from a journalistic perspective.

Ramachandran: In some ways it’s broken geographic barriers to reach people around the country or world. But in another sense, particularly when trying to reach marginalized communities, are we self-selecting the sorts of people who would want to speak out anyway or who are comfortable with engaging on those platforms?

When I was doing a lot of reporting on the pandemic spike in anti-Asian hate crimes and incidents, there were a lot of folks on the forefront talking about the issue on social platforms. But when talking to some of the folks who have been personally impacted by these issues, it’s trying to build rapport with someone whose child has been stabbed in a parking lot because of a hate crime. Trying to do that interview over Zoom is just a very different dynamic versus really ingraining yourself in the community and trying to understand the story and all its nuances and complexities. I think in some ways (Zoom) is such a useful tool, but in other ways, I think it’s a means to launch a conversation in a traditional way.

Branch: I think it’s just a different conversation when you and I are looking at each other, even if it’s through a camera. But I do worry that media companies will use it as a crutch and not send people out because it’s too simple and much cheaper to do it this way. I still think the best reporting is face to face, in person, not face to face over a monitor. It’s a totally different dynamic. I mean, I can see you in your little box right now, but I don’t know what the environment is around you. There’s not a whole lot of spontaneity when you and I are talking like this. There’s no, “Let’s just jump in the car and go get coffee somewhere,” or I can’t see what you have posted on your refrigerator that might elicit a whole line of questions.

Bergen: Good point, John. I’m curious, what form is most of your content being created in and how is it distributed to audiences?

Fortiér: Everything I do is multiplatform, from a 20-second spot to a full-fledged feature. If I go out to do a story, it’s pictures, tweets while I’m there, video, hopefully, depending on what’s happened. We create content specifically for TikTok. Usually I’m trying to find sources, but sometimes just to engage audiences. I kind of feel like the legacy journalists are just kind of catching up, to be honest with you, now that The New York Times and The Washington Post are like, “Oh, audio is a thing.”

Bergen: Well, that sounded like you guys need to respond to that one.

Ramachandran: Honestly, the last 10 years have been everything from print to writing for the web to audio work to video work to data analysis. I think the best editors have always given me the advice to just tell the story in the medium that tells the story best.

Bergen: I love that. It’s what we try to teach our students, but it always sounds so much better when somebody else says that.

Branch: I’ll say that what has been one of the changes post-“Snow Fall” is we have had a lot more conversations about the best way to present the story. Now, it’s like, what if this is nothing but a photo essay? What if this is actually a big, dynamic graphic? What if it is text? What if it’s video?

I’m working on a story now that we hope to make a full-length documentary. Some of my stories they’ll have me read so we can deliver them to podcast and audio audiences.

I think it has kind of exploded the environment and the imagination that we have for what’s the best way to deliver this to people. It’s exciting times to be a part of it.

Making a difference

Bergen: Could each of you talk a little bit about your experience with how journalism has made a difference?

Fortiér: I was the only health journalist in Oklahoma. We had a huge opioid lawsuit against Purdue (Pharma) settled, but Johnson & Johnson was the one that actually went to trial.

The trial happened to be in the town that I lived in, Norman, Oklahoma. I did a bunch of stories leading up to it, and then I just filed and filed and filed with NPR’s newscast. I was the only reporter that was there every day.

Because I tweeted the whole thing—and that was really the only way that people knew it was happening because it wasn’t being broadcast live—I had a ton of people following me on Twitter, both for and against opioid companies, which was interesting.

It showed me how important local journalism is because I was there. I had other journalists telling me the only reason they came was because their editor heard what I was doing and thought, “Oh, we better get over there.” Parachuting in has its merits in some cases, but most of the time you need local people who know the ins and outs and the subtleties of what’s going on.

Bergen: Although my question was, how does journalism have an impact, what you’ve really underscored is, journalists have an impact.

Ramachandran: Before the pandemic, I worked for ProPublica’s Chicago office. We were local reporters living in the communities that we were reporting on. There were tangible impacts of laws changed. We had colleagues who did investigations on the tax assessment system there; the corrupt assessor who ended up getting voted out the next election; how they were targeting Black and brown communities of Chicago in disproportionate ways; and then how those policies were kind of changed in Chicago.

In my own reporting on Asian American communities, it’s interesting to see a different sort of impact. I did a few stories on how South Asian Americans have a higher risk of cardiovascular ailments, and I got emails saying, “Hey, I signed up to get a heart scan,” or, “I’m going to be talking to my primary care doctor.”

Branch: One theme I’ve had the last 10 years has been stories about CTE, the chronic brain disease caused by repetitive hits in a lot of sports. I’m here in Colorado right now, and I just saw a friend the other night who said, “I can’t watch hockey the way I used to anymore, thanks to you. I can’t watch football the way I used to because of the reporting that you and your colleagues have done.”

You know, anytime you hear somebody talk about political news or sports news or celebrity news, or on global news of some sort, I want to say, “You realize that’s media, right? You’ve been bashing the media, but you realize everything that you talk about, everything that connects us through conversation is media.”

I just want people to remember, there are real people behind this news.

Moments of joy

Bergen: I’m just curious, are there moments of joy in your work?

Ramachandran: I think when you tell the stories that you want to tell, tell the stories that impact folks, that kind of stuff is what keeps me going.

Branch: I find joy in small places, like when I’ve written a nice sentence. Most of my joy comes in very private moments: When I’ve received a callback that I’ve been waiting for, or just got off the phone on a really good interview, and I can’t wait to tell my editor what I’ve just found out.

Fortiér: I think I find the most joy when I get to take a listener somewhere that they don’t normally go or hear from someone that they wouldn’t think to speak to. What I really love about audio is that I can take 20 seconds and let that quote breathe. It has a pacing to it. It’s very experiential.

Trust and credibility

Bergen: What are the biggest challenges you face as journalists?

Branch: Credibility and maintaining trust with audiences that are as fractured as ever. I work in what’s derisively called the mainstream media. I worry about how we get that mainstream news to a wide swath of people, across socioeconomic lines, across political lines, across racial divides, so that we’re all working with a core set of facts. That’s become trickier and trickier as the years have gone by.

Bergen: And that’s probably not going to change in the future.

Branch: Our goal at The New York Times is to keep delivering truth as we believe it should be told and hope that people come around, and not try to bend to certain people, not just play to your audience. I think that’s what the original journalism tenets were—deliver truth as unbiased as possible and let people absorb it as they absorb it, but don’t try to steer your news to an audience necessarily. That’s tricky, because you get into conversations about bias and unintended biases and so on. We’ve been doing it for 170 years. We’ll keep going and hope that more people keep believing what we’re delivering.

Fortiér: I would add to that: staying relevant. In order to be consumable by younger audiences, we really need to get more Black and brown people in newsrooms and in positions of power within newsrooms. You know, I can think of one public radio station that has a woman as the CEO or president off the top of my head. So, we talk about diversity all the time. We talk about diversity in sources, but we really need more diversity
in journalism.

Ramachandran: I feel like earlier in my career, I would’ve said it’s the economics of journalism, which I think is definitely a concern, but it feels like we’re going to figure that out. But to John’s point, I’m personally very concerned—and I feel like it’s a challenge for journalism—this credibility and trust question. I think that’s just the biggest thing we’re going to be grappling with for many years.

Fortiér: I will say having been a reporter in Oklahoma at a public radio station where people don’t really like journalists, that as I consistently did accurate, solid reporting, I got respect. It took a little while, but as I kept doing the good work, people realized that I wasn’t biased.

Bergen: Just a good reminder how much relationship building can have an impact on this.

Branch: To what Jackie said, that’s my mission, just keep doing the good work. I don’t know what else we can do.

CMCI Dean Lori Bergen talked with three alumni from across the country—John Branch (MJour’89), Jackie Fortiér (MJour’13) and Vignesh Ramachandran (Jour’11)—over Zoom last summer about their day-to-day experiences as journalists.

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Sound of the Wild

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 06:39:22 +0000

Sound of the Wild Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/26/2022 - 00:39

By Lauren Irwin (Jour’22)
Illustration by Dana Heimes

In November 2020, Audrey Mayes (MMediaSt’22) watched as 13 mostly urban counties outvoted 51 mostly rural counties, approving gray wolf reintroduction in Colorado.

To Mayes, the vote on Proposition 114 was a clear demonstration of the state’s rural-urban divide, and it showed rural voices being drowned out. She decided to do something about it.

As Mayes formulated the topic of her master’s program final project, she focused on uplifting and highlighting rural perspectives on Colorado wildlife issues and controversies. She gathered information from scientists, ecologists, outdoor business owners, farmers, ranchers, and parks and wildlife employees to combine her two interests—wildlife and media—into a three-part podcast.

“Within the discussion of the (proposition), the rural voices were just not being heard or being pushed into the background, and that’s where I really focused my attention in raising the rural perspective within these spaces,” said Mayes, a recent graduate from CMCI’s Media and Public Engagement master’s program.

Through research, interviews and personal experience, she found that it’s difficult for rural people to engage with news media because of technological challenges, like poor internet access, distrust of media or, most commonly, lack of time.

Mayes knows firsthand that her target audience is busy. She grew up in rural Texas, spending most of her time outside, hunting, fishing and learning from family about rural traditions and lifestyles.

“If the sun’s up, rural people are usually working,” Mayes said.

With hectic schedules in mind, Mayes knew she needed to create a media project that would be easily accessible—and a podcast seemed like the perfect solution.

“The reason I made it into a podcast is that it’s easy to consume. You can pay attention to them, but you can do other things,” she said.

In April, Mayes published her podcast, Where the Aud Things Are, on Spotify. With a title borrowed from the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, Mayes knew her wildlife focus, plus the “odd” lifestyle of rural people and her name, Audrey, fit together to create a name representative of the content she was creating.

Mayes has received audience engagement and positive responses since debuting the podcast. In some cases, people have suggested she expand her coverage to different states or submitted topics for her to cover.

She plans to continue producing the podcast while she pursues a career in media and conservation with Vista Outdoor Inc. as Remington Ammunition’s marketing specialist.

“Conservation is immensely important to me because loving wildlife . . . was instilled in me when I was a young child,” Mayes said. “My hope is to allow future generations the same opportunity by conserving traditions, wildlife and wild spaces.”

Master’s student Audrey Mayes grew up in rural Texas and knows firsthand how hard it is for busy workers to consume news. So she created a podcast, Where the Aud Things Are, to elevate the rural perspective on wildlife issues in Colorado.

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Mission for Change

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 06:12:16 +0000

Mission for Change Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/25/2022 - 00:12

By Hannah Prince (Jour’22)

As Emma Rabius (StratComm’22) walked across campus, she was deep in thought about a class assignment: create a climate-focused project that would change student attitudes. It had to be good, she knew. The winning idea would be submitted for grant funding.

Once in class, Rabius proposed a localized, campuswide “Meatless Mondays” campaign.

“I’ve always been on the trajectory of wanting to do some kind of good for the environment,” Rabius said. “I started making changes in my personal life, trying to eat more local foods.”

Within minutes, her idea was declared the class favorite. Weeks later, the class’s work became a reality—thanks to funding from Mission Zero, a Boulder-based climate action organization.

In spring 2022, the Meatless Mondays campaign was one of seven projects in the College of Media, Communication and Information to receive grant funding through Mission Zero. The organization, founded by Scott King (ElEngr’85), offers learning opportunities, funding and support for climate-focused academics at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��.

This year for the first time, Mission Zero partnered with CMCI, donating $25,000 to further climate-focused work in the college.

“This is the first time we’ve had money to execute a campaign, something students have always asked for when working on a strategic communication project,” said Associate Professor Erin Schauster, faculty lead for the Meatless Mondays project. “You can’t get more real-world than that.”

In Schauster’s strategic communication class, each student group developed a unique campaign strategy to explain to audiences the substantial climate impact of meat production and consumption.

One group encouraged non-meat proteins as part of an exercise-focused diet. Another advocated for using alternative milks in coffee, and a third group urged students to avoid eating meat on Mondays. The class used its $4,825 grant to advertise and buy materials, like non-meat protein samples, coffee tumblers, seed kits for herbs and tailored tote bags.

“Every group had to do research about climate change, meat consumption, best practices for climate change communication, and about what CU was already doing in this space,” Schauster said. “A lot of that research inspired their ideas.”

In other areas of CMCI, the six grantees used different methods to tackle climate action. Some emphasized storytelling by offering film awards, incorporating climate topics into student publications or using interactive platforms to communicate climate issues to the public. Others included community partners, like the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).

Emma Piper-Burket, a PhD student in the Emergent Technologies and Media Art Practices program, received $500 from Mission Zero to fund a film project visualizing ecosystem change over time.

The film will show the life cycle of mountain pine beetles, trees, petrified wood and humans. Mountain pine beetles are one of the most severe threats to the health of Western conifer forests, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Her film captures the beetles as they make patterns in the bark—a behavior that ultimately contributes to the death of the tree.

“I try to be really present with the environment,” said Piper-Burket, who uses media to investigate interactions among nature, society and the human spirit. “I’ve scaled back and now film the things that are coming to me—trying to be gentle with all those things that are happening and responsive.

Phaedra C. Pezzullo, associate professor of communication and media studies, received $2,175 from Mission Zero to focus on environmental justice storytelling in Colorado.

In the graduate-level Foundations of Environmental Justice course, her students partnered with CDPHE to pilot digital storytelling projects about the Lower Arkansas River Valley and Pueblo County using ArcGIS StoryMaps. The interactive stories are housed on the state’s new Environmental Justice website.

Students interviewed Colorado residents about their communities and integrated audio clips in the story maps, which also include photographs, reporting and resources for public engagement. Each story opens with what people love in their communities.

“Environmental harm, whether it’s climate change or toxic pollution, is not just about the numbers and the science, but it is also about human relationships,” Pezzullo said.

The project prioritized environmental and social issues, including how climate change affects marginalized communities, said Anthony Albidrez, who is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism.

“Environmental justice for me is amplifying the voices of the frontline communities that are facing continued environmental degradation and the continued impacts of climate change,” said Albidrez, who interviewed residents in Fowler, Colorado, part of the Lower Arkansas River Valley.

Through their Mission Zero projects, CMCI faculty and students connected climate issues to the daily lives of Coloradans and their neighbors—all through stories shared in innovative ways. They sought to reveal why it’s so vital that all stakeholders take climate action.

“No story is the last word,” Pezzullo said. “No conversation is the final conversation on environmental justice. There will always be challenges, and to find a way to make peace with ethical decisions is just one step.”

In 2022, the climate-action organization Mission Zero partnered with CMCI for the first time, donating $25,000 to further climate-focused work in the college. Faculty and students undertook seven grant projects, tackling climate issues through innovative storytelling.

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Mapping Injustice

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 06:14:03 +0000

Mapping Injustice Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/23/2022 - 00:14

After the historic 1921 flood in Pueblo, Colorado, the iconic riverwalk reverted the Arkansas River to its historic location through the heart of downtown. Credit: sea turtle-CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr

By Hannah Stewart (Comm’19)

This spring, graduate students in the College of Media, Communication and Information took environmental justice into their own hands through the art of digital storytelling.

As part of an environmental studies graduate level course, students joined a state-led effort to address environmental injustice around Colorado. Their role was to research the histories and environmental issues in communities statewide, then compile it into online stories for Colorado EnviroScreen, an interactive mapping and health screening tool launched in June.

“Stories are an important complement to [CO EnviroScreen] because they humanize the issues that communities are facing and place them into a context of everyday life,” said Michael Warren Cook, a PhD student in the communication department who participated in the project. “I think stories move audiences to empathy and action in ways that quantitative data alone cannot.”

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and a team from Colorado State University launched CO EnviroScreen to help identify communities that have a heavier burden of negative health impacts caused by issues in their environments.

For many communities, systemic challenges create barriers to resolving the issues. The open-source tool could help people maximize funding efforts, and help avoid, reduce and repair environmental harms, according to CDPHE.

CO EnviroScreen opens with a map of Colorado that displays counties on a scale from most to least burdened. Interactive graphs show how counties score based on a variety of factors, like environmental exposures, climate vulnerability and sensitive populations.

But the project doesn’t just focus on data: It digs more deeply into the stories behind community health challenges and resiliency. That’s where CMCI joined in.

In the Foundations in Environmental Justice course, led by CMCI Associate Professor Phaedra C. Pezzullo, students drew on their training in environmental justice studies and multimedia storytelling to share the stories of communities disproportionately experiencing environment-related health impacts.

“People are proud of where they live and where they come from,” said Anthony Albidrez, a journalism master’s student and the student lead for the project. “Learning firsthand about why people call a certain community home allows us greater insights into their lives as human beings.”

For a story on Pueblo County, students researched the impacts of a historic 1921 flood, superfund site, coal-based power plant and steel mill. They dove into water quality issues in the Lower Arkansas River Watershed and explained the impacts on agriculture and drinking water.

For each project, they created a unique ArcGIS StoryMap to share their work. The platform overlays photos, maps, text, audio recordings, web links and other elements to help readers explore each topic.

The StoryMaps show more about these communities than just data: They show history, relationships and resiliency.

“There is a deficit framing that shows up in a lot of environmental work—e.g., ‘What's wrong with this place?’” Cook said. “Although environmental injustices are critically important to highlight, this project also gave us the opportunity to hear about what people love about a place, and the ideas and solutions that communities are already proposing and implementing to address environmental injustices.”

This class was supported by a Payden Teaching Excellence Grant and a grant from Mission Zero, a Boulder-based organization aimed at combating climate change. Find the published projects here by selecting the StoryMap layer on the interactive map, and explore the gallery of images below.

The Comanche 3 power plant in Pueblo County is the state’s largest single emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. It is set to close by 2031, thus ending coal-generated electricity in Colorado. Credit: Anthony Albidrez

A freight train makes its way through Otero County, Colorado. Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress

Otero County is prone to having droughts, which means water quality is an ongoing concern. Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress

Ranchers in the semi-arid Lower Arkansas River Valley prioritize managing the environment to care for crops and livestock. Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress

The Arkansas River picks up contaminants on its way from the Rocky Mountains to the eastern plains of Colorado. Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress

Situated in Colorado’s eastern plains, the Lower Arkansas River Valley is subject to an unpredictable climate. Credit: Melissa Bukovsky

The Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo broke ground in 1996 and was completed in 2000. It has become a symbol of community resilience and is key to economic growth. Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress

The Colorado State Fair, a staple of the Pueblo community, first began in October 1872. Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress

CMCI graduate students worked with the state in their quest to map and track environmental injustice in Colorado. Through digital storytelling, students highlighted communities’ environmental concerns as well as the histories of people living in those places.

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Connecting Through Trauma

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 21:33:02 +0000

Connecting Through Trauma Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/10/2021 - 14:33

Samira Rajabi, assistant professor of media studies, spent years battling a brain tumor. Her experience of trauma and finding support through social media inspired research she hopes will help others.

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#BreakTheScript

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 21:09:57 +0000

#BreakTheScript Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/10/2021 - 14:09

By Stephanie Cook (MJour’18)

To administer effective medical care, providers rely on their patients for accurate information. So what happens when the provider asks the wrong questions or the patient isn’t comfortable revealing the truth?

As a social scientist focused on end-of-life communication, Carey Candrian (Comm’04; MComm’07; PhDComm’11), an associate professor of health communication at the CU School of Medicine, is focused on this paradigm––especially as it relates to the LGBTQ community.

Candrian’s research shows that, for patients who don’t identify as cisgender or straight, traditional scripts used in medical forms, intake questions and admission conversations tend to overlook critical elements of their life experience.

“Think about the script we all get in health care: Are you married? Do you have kids? And now think how isolating and silencing that script can be when you don’t fit,” she recently explained in an interview with PBS NewsHour. “I think the language we use around health care needs to be reimagined.

For elderly patients, especially, this dynamic can pose a painful and scary conundrum.

“Do you come out and risk being treated poorly, or do you stay silent and hide a fundamental part of who you are?” she says. “That’s a heck of a choice, so our other option is that we break these scripts––we open them up in a way that gives people space to answer in a way that fits them.”

Candrian first noticed the limiting nature of traditional medical scripts while shadowing a hospice admissions nurse early in her career, she recently told CU Anschutz Today. Her interest in communication, though, goes back even further.

“I got into a major in communication pretty randomly,” she told NewsHour. “It was the first day of class, and it was a large lecture hall, and the professor got up the first day and said, ‘People are not the problem. It’s the way people talk that’s the problem. And if you want to change culture, you need to give people a new vocabulary.’”

For Candrian, providing this new vocabulary is a critical mission with a massive scope.

“Currently, there are 2.4 million LGBT seniors in this country, and nearly half––48% of them––have not shared that with their doctors,” she says.

Learn more about Candrian in CU Anschutz Today and on PBS NewsHour.

Ever felt like your doctor’s questions missed the mark? Carey Candrian (Comm’04; MComm’07; PhDComm’11), associate professor of health communication at the CU School of Medicine, shares why healthcare needs to be reimagined one sentence at a time.

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